Share this:

Press sommeliers Scott Brenner and Kelli White take a break from shopping

While many recession-conscious restaurants are reducing their wine inventory and trimming the variety on their wine lists, at Press in St. Helena, customers can now expect to see an extra bottle or two.

Or actually, several hundred.

Press sommeliers Kelli White and Scott Brenner have just purchased more than 400 different wines dating back to the early 1960’s, in an effort to position the restaurant as having what White says “we believe to be among the most comprehensive collections of Napa Valley wine in the world.”

So large is the investment that Press owner Leslie Rudd is building a brand new cellar, with capacity to hold more than 10,000 bottles. Designed by architect Howard Backen, the state-of-the-art display area will be enclosed in glass, and – get this – outfitted with a temperature/humidity control system so high-tech that it will alert management with a phone call should there be any fluctuations in the settings.

Press, of course, operates on a theme of wine, specifically celebrating the heritage and history of Napa Valley vintages. The restaurant’s original list of nearly 1,000 local wines starts with bottles from the 1950’s.

The new acquisitions date mostly from the 70’s and 80’s, including a comprehensive vertical of Beaulieu Vineyard Georges de Latour stretching back to 1962, an array of mid-early 90’s DVX bottlings from Mumm, and what White calls the crowning jewels — Diamond Creek wines from the 70’s and 80’s.

Rudd also owns Dean & Deluca next door, and the cellar will occupy a former storage building that sits between the two businesses. So with the glass encasement, shoppers at the gourmet grocery will be able to peek into the wine repository. Build-out is expected to be complete by October.

Securing the new wines required a new way of shopping, too. Until the purchase last week, all of the restaurant’s older wine had been sourced either directly from the libraries of each winery, or from trusted collectors with cellars personally vetted by White and Brenner.

The 400 wines were purchased at auction, however.

“Buying from auction is always tricky because you cannot directly ascertain the provenance,” said White. “But the good people at Bonhams & Butterfields (auction house) were gracious and patient enough to pull bottles from all of the lots we were interested in, allowing Scott and I to personally examine the condition of the bottles.”

Anyone harboring dusty treasures in their own wine cellars might want to contact Press, as well. To fill out those remaining slots in the new cellar, White and Brenner are currently seeking Napa wines from as far back as the 40’s.